race

My race was scheduled for 5:30pm, but I attended the Race Meeting at 8am, hoping we would form a Masters 4-. This discipline had just one competitor, from Brandys rowing club (close to Prague), and they had asked if there could be an ad hoc opponent. I would have loved to row this race, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out this way.

No problem. Hodonin is a fun place to sit on the river bank and watch the racing. Most of the disciplines are in the various youth age categories, and this is usually very exciting to watch.

I didn’t have to wait very long to see my youngest son Robin finish his first race in the single. In Piestany, a few weeks ago, he flipped before the start, but this time he rowed a decent race and crossed the finish line in fourth place.

An hour later, it was time for my other son, Dominik, and he scored his first win in the single. His proud mother took a picture after he got his medal and a little present:

Also my daughter Lenka rowed a great race in the Juniors 2x, coming in second place.

Then it was time for me to get ready for my race. I was up against Mr Burda and my old friend Vojtech Cernak, who recently came in second place rowing at the World Masters Games in Auckland. I chatted a bit with Vojtech before the race and discovered that he had spent 6 weeks in Australia and New Zealand, paying rowing coaches to work with him and training 2 or 3 times a day.

In these slightly unregular races, I was up in lane 1 on the Moravian bank, Mr Cernak in lane 2, Mr Burda in lane 3 and my friend Martin “Turkey” Krocil, from my own club, in lane for on the Slovak bank. In this “international race”, that means that I would spend the race in the Czech Republic, Martin would row across the border in the Slovak republic, and Mr Cernak and Mr Burda would be crossing the border several times. Rowing is a water sport and bodies of water are often international borders. Even after a few years of racing at this venue I find it fascinating to launch the boat next to the border sign.

The advantage of lane 1 is that you row in the inner turn. The disadvantage is that you are the last boat in a stacked start, and the disadvantage (excuse number 2) is that there is slightly weaker stream than in lanes 2 and 3.

So here is the race report:

In the stacked start position, I was a length behind Mr Cernak. Immediately after the start strokes, I was still a length behind. In line with my plan, I started to reduce the power to about 350W, but immediately after the first buoy (and turn) I upped the power to try and pass Mr Cernak. At this point, Mr Burda and Martin Krocil were not so relevant any more. I closed to about half a length, but I failed to push my bow ball next to his.

In theory I had the advantage of the inner turn, but I didn’t really steer the ideal line. I passed the second buoy line with the buoy dividing lane 2 and 3 under my right oarlock, still a length behind.

With 500m to go I was still a length behind.

In the final straight part, Vojtech was smart enough to move a little closer to lane 1, effectively letting me row in his puddles and making it difficult for me to pass him. About 300m before the finish I passed through an area with lots of debris in lane 1. I actually felt a tree branch hit my fin really hard. At this point I saw my power drop to below 300W, I heard the regatta speaker say something about the World Masters Games and I was unable to bring the power back up.

So Cernak won.

So over 1000m I scored 320W. I need to work on increasing that number.

Looking at wash, the number is a bit skewed because I rowed the inner turn, so my left (Empowered) oarlock registered a few strokes where I lightened up to steer. Still, the final 400m of the race are not nice in terms of the Wash numbers, although Kleshnev’s latest newsletter suggests that my values are not bad at all.

I was disappointed, mainly because I wasn’t able to surprise Mr Cernak and pass him in the first turn, then because I let technique get worse as I got tired, and finally because I didn’t even try to raise the stroke rate on the final straight stretch. I was also disappointed when I saw how deep Mr Cernak had to go. He had to lie flat in his single for a few minutes and was unable to carry his single from the dock without help.

I finished the day by taking Romana out for dinner in a nice restaurant, after which we returned to the Hodonin rowing club for a party with wine tasting. We didn’t go to bed too late, because we had important racing on Sunday, for example a mixed double row against Mr and Mrs Cernak (who managed a second place in this discipline in the Auckland World Masters Games).

Three races for me this Sunday. First, a mixed quad sprint (500m) at 9:35. Followed by what I considered to be the main event, the Masters C single, over 1000m, at 10:50. And finally the Masters C double at 13:50.

Masters Mix 4x-

I didn’t know about my start in the mixed quad until Saturday morning. It turns out the local team had been training this discipline, and had written up names of participants from other clubs to create some opponents. So on Saturday morning I discovered my name in the regatta program and my quad partners. Luckily we had a quad on our trailer. I rowed with Michal (the trainer of the boys), my wife Romana, and Michaela from the rowing club in Uherske Hradiste. We were up against the local team from Piestany and a mixed quad from Uherske Hradiste.

I am afraid we messed up the start a bit. We had done some pretty good practice starts during the warming up for the race, but we were not aligned when the referee announced (in Slovak) that he would start the race from the launch and that he would start immediately. As the stroke rower, I still had my blades flat on the water when the starter said “Attention”, and we definitely missed half a stroke.

Half a stroke is quite a lot on a 500m sprint on a fast flowing river. As was proven about 1 minute and 20 seconds later, when we crossed the finish line half a stroke behind the winning Piestany.

I had tried hard. The stroke rate had been in the high 30s for the entire minute and a bit, and my legs were exploding, but it wasn’t enough.

Masters C/D 1x

On to the main event. The Masters singles races were divided in two finals, one with the younger “A” and “B” rowers, and one with three “C” rowers and one “D” rower. In principle, I should win this race.

A few minutes before I wanted to launch, I was fiddling with my SpeedCoach and the single, when it started to rain. I turned around the single in the slings and reached our tent just in time before it started to rain really hard. I saw some of my competitors rowing to the start in the heavy rain. I checked the sky and decided to wait until the rain had completely stopped. It shortened the time before the start a bit, but there was still some reserve, and I figured it was better to arrive at the start line dry and not with a boat filled with water.

For me, the race was an experiment. With the power meter in the boat, I was torn between just rowing my usual race and trying to adhere to a certain power number and trying to flat pace. I guess the end result was a hybrid, but it was interesting.

The “ideal” pace was to row somewhere between 320W and 340W average on the SpeedCoach, 32spm, and try to ignore the other rowers.

I was second out of the start, with the guy from Bratislava a length ahead.

It is very hard for rowers to ignore other rowers in such a race situation. There is nothing better than being the first out of the start and to look at the competitors.

Still, I decided to go to slightly above sustainable pace (350W) but not much higher. So I ended up rowing about 400m behind this Bratislava guy, and then I finally started to move. Looking at the pace values in hindsight, I didn’t really speed up, but he was slowing down. During the race, I could also see that from the Power value, and I must say it was quite a nice feeling to hold 320W and see that I gained on him with every stroke. The passing took about 15 to 20 strokes. Then I was ahead of him and I decided to continue at 32-33spm and trying to hold 320W.

You can see from the power plot that I actually reduced the Power a bit after I had passed the competitor. I think it proves that going out too fast is a bad tactic.

That was a fast 1000m! Actually, it equals my erg PB. With a big help from the river Vah of course. Third win in a row for me in this race. I will do some detailed analysis in another blog post.

Masters C 2x

I spent the time between the singles race and the start of the doubles organizing a doubles partner. Originally, I was scheduled to row with the Boys trainer Michal, but his boys had a lot of starts around the 2x event, so he preferred to not row it. Finally, I found a guy from the Breclav rowing club wanting to row with me. I went around telling the main competitors so they wouldn’t be surprised and all was fine.

We took one of our club 2x boats, and I was surprised how low it was rigged.

Our main competitors were the double of Marko Milodanovic and Andreas Kral. Marko had won his singles race in a time 8 seconds faster than I. Kral and my partner Antonin were equally fast with 3:31. But of course Marko and Andreas train together regularly.

We rowed next to them for the first 500m. Then we got hit by a big wake, and the Austrians did a better job of rowing through it. In the final 200m we were trying to fight off Bratislava who were taking over. In the end they got us by 0.5 seconds.

After that it was time to help the coaches with their teams and to start preparing the trailer for the trip home. Around 3pm the “packing panic” started, which was worse than normal, because we were traveling with a lot of newby kids who didn’t know the drill, so boats arrived at the trailer in the wrong order, which created a traffic chaos, because the trailer parking was also the main through road from the race venue to the town.

I was glad when I could wave the trailer goodbye and get to my bike. We cycled back to our hotel. Romana and I took an hour of sauna and steam bath, and then we had a nice dinner. Monday would be a holiday, so we didn’t have to travel home immediately after the races.

What a relief. I prolonged my membership of the sub-7 minutes group yesterday, at the “ErgoShow”.

The ErgoShow was an indoor rowing event. The main part of the event was the Czech Indoor Rowing Championships, but they had fun events around it. For Masters, there was a 1k race in the morning (to which I didn’t participate) and they had University Fours. Four ergs slides connected together, racing over 4 minutes. The sum of the four distance scores is the score of the four. Teams of different universities rowed against each other in this format.

They also had live broadcasting over YouTube and a very good commenter. In the morning, I followed the races from my living room. I ended up cheering to the computer monitor when my daughter Lenka rowed her race.

Just after lunch, one of the other Masters at our club, picked me up in his minivan. A quick round through Brno to pick up the others and we were on our way to Hodonin, a 1 hour drive south of Brno.

The venue was really nice. There was a warming up room with lots of ergs, a separate cooling down room with lots of ergs and bikes, and the main hall with two stages full of ergs. Another nice detail was lots of places where you could refill your water bottle with a sports drink for free.

I made a quick stop at the Concept2/NK booth to pick up some goodies:

Yes – my own Empower Oarlock. Too bad there is still 40cm of ice on our lake.

I also got an iphone connection kit. Unfortunately, I was already too focused on my race, and didn’t check it. At home, I found out that they had given me a connection kit for the iphone 4, which has a different connector than my iphone 5. Well, trainings at the club will remain unconnected for a while.

Concept2 did ask me if I could come around for a chat after the races.

Now it was less than an hour to my scheduled racing time. Time to change clothes and hop on one of the warming up ergs, a model D with a PM3.

After about 6km of Fletcher-like warming up (I can never remember the exact durations and paces, but I think I get it sort of right) it was time to visit the bathroom and some other confused running around. By the time I was done with that, it was 10 minutes to the scheduled time for my race.

A few minutes to get the footstretcher and drag factor set to my favorite settings and do a few strokes to test the erg, and then it was Ready – Attention – ROW! (Actually we did get to do that twice, because someone – not me – caused a false start.)

Again an unconnected row. I just have the Strava heart rate record from my Garmin watch:

On the monitor next to the erg I could see that my little boat was in the back of the pack. I knew this was going to happen and I actually rowed my own race. After the first few starting strokes I found myself at 1:39, with an average of 1:46. I continued conservatively, pulling 1:45/1:46 1:46 with the occasional 1:44 in the first 800m (I was mentally doing 1:46, but there were enough strokes at 1:45). At 1200m to go I switched to “1:45” (i.e. I banned 1:46 strokes). Rowed down to 900 to go, then to 600 to go, at which point I started pulling 1:44. With 300m to go I went all out. There was a guy who was 8m ahead of me. I nearly got him, but in the end he finished 2 seconds earlier.

No drama, really. Even though I wondered whether there was more in the tank, I was glad I paced conservatively. After my 7:09 debacle I wasn’t sure if I was in sub-7 shape. Actually when my competitors asked what I was aiming for, I jokingly answered that I would go for 6 minutes and 60 seconds.

The “quick chat” at the Concept2 booth started with “Why haven’t you told us about your project?” and it turned into a slightly longer, friendly chat. At one point my team mates threatened to leave without me, so I had to stop chatting and jump in the car back to Brno.

Here are the full results in the Masters category. Our Jiri Pfeifer rowed a nice row for a 51 year old (6:23.9). My race was won by Karel Nevrala. He moved to live with his Mix 2x partner, who now also is his girlfriend, and both of them have taken to train very hard. Romana and I beat them in the Mix 2x a couple of time, but she rowed a 6:57.6 yesterday, so she nearly chicked me.

My end time was 6:57.5 (just 1.9 seconds above my Masters PB of 6:55.6). Here are the splits according to the PM:

1st 500 – 1:45.4 – 31SPM

2nd 500 – 1:45.0 – 31 SPM

3rd 500 – 1:44.0 – 31 SPM

4th 500 – 1:43.2 – 33 SPM

Unfortunately, I cannot look at my race on YouTube any more because the Warner Music Group has blocked it for copyright reasons. Yes, there was background music played at the venue!

A holiday today, the celebration of the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Czechs fall in a few categories in this day:

Those who go to their cottage for a long weekend

Those who go shopping

Those who participate in a sports event

Those who go to the main square to listen to political speeches

Then there is also a loud minority who take part in extreme right or extreme left demonstrations.

As every year, I chose option 3.

Same run as a year ago, but the weather was different. A year ago it was sunny and dry. Today, it was wet and misty, and 2 degrees above 0. In the past few days we’ve had this bad weather. Snow alternated with rain, and the temperature oscillating around the freezing point.

My goal was to beat last year’s effort. I had written down last year’s passing times for a few key points along the route, but during the run I failed to remember them. In fact, I was thinking that I was one minute ahead of my target time for most of the run, where in fact I was a minute behind.

A year ago, I ran 47:07 on dry ground. Today, it was 48:17 on muddy ground.

In terms of relative effort, this year I was 158th of 346 (56% percentile), 12:03 minutes behind the winner. A year ago, I was 170th of 422 (60% percentile), 12:19 minutes behind the winner. I conclude that the results are probably very comparable. Average heart rate was 171 bpm this year, vs 173 bpm a year ago.

The nice thing about these running events is that they’re so massive. As a rower who runs occasionally, you end up in the middle of the pack, but there are hundreds of people, and there is always someone slightly ahead to pass.

I also discovered that none of the running sites offer a comparison between two workouts. I would have loved to compare a pace vs distance plot for the 2016 run compared to the 2015 run. It’s so simple to make one plot with two runs overlaid.

A few pictures from the event:

Kid’s runThe WeatherYours truly almost invisible (yellow cap behind bearded man). Mr “Always One Step Ahead” was one step ahead of me until the second climb where I passed him

Oh, and this, the first Empower Oarlocks are shipping. This is very exciting:

No training. In the evening, Romana and I made the program for Hradiště, i.e. the instructions where everybody would be at any given point in time. It’s not easy.

There’s a small bus with all the rowers at the start. One by one they do their warming up, get ready to race, and row the 6km race. Somebody needs to bring their shoes and some clothes to the finish, especially when it’s 9 degrees and chilly. Then there’s three singles that are used in the morning and in the afternoon. So at some point in time we have to drive my small trailer from the finish back to the start for those three singles. Then Romana wants to be at the start to help her girls with warming up and race prep. And I will spend the morning on the bike cheering various athletes. One thing is easy. Head coach will be in the big turn half way with his stopwatch, a pen and a note book. He will record all times and give key info to the guys racing, how they stand respective to their competitors.

So our day was planned from 7am to 5pm with 15 minute precision. Well, it’s an important race for the youth. Their 6km OTW time is measured against a standard, and each participant who scores more than 100% will be invited for a 6k erg race and some further testing. If successful, the youth will be part of the “Youth Sports Center” for rowing, and the club will receive state funding for covering training costs.

Saturday

So alarm clock at 6, leave house at 7, drive to rowing club to get small trailer, drive the 70km to Hradiště, park trailer. Then Romana takes the car to the start and I hop on the bike.

My first task was to cycle with one of the juniors, cheer and give steering instructions. Mr Cermak had the luxury of having his parents on the bike, so I chose to bike with Mr Kuncak. (Sometimes the parents’ steering instructions are counterproductive, but Kuncak is our biggest Ace in the juniors field.)

On the right bank you can cycle the entire 6km. On the left bank you can only do the final 3km. I chose to cycle on the left bank with a better bike path, because I didn’t want to spend my race energy cycling through a stubble-field on the right bank. Picked up Mr Kuncak with 3km to go and started cheering and steering. When I passed head coach we got the information that he was rowing in 2nd place with 2 seconds loss to the fastest guy. So I cheered and cheered. Shouted at him to just keep rowing the same 30spm stroke and hoping it would help.

When Mr Kuncak finished, I cycled back to wait for the race of my daughter Lenka. I saw Mr Cermak in passing, with his father cheering.

Had to spend more than an hour on the 3km point. The autumn sun disappeared and I did a few kilometers of cycling around the local villages just to stay warm.

Lenka arrived on our single. I measured the distance to the girl ahead of her. With 1 minute between starts, Lenka arrived 50 seconds behind that girl, so that was 10 seconds to the good. There was a big gap behind her, so a very positive situation to cheer and steer. Lenka was rowing 26spm, but that didn’t bother me as I knew she had been ill a week ago and the 26-27spm reflected her fitness. I think I cheered her through the tough part between 4km and 5km, and then got her rating up in the final km. Today, she told me she didn’t hear me well, and she didn’t understand what she heard. OK, so far for the coaching. 🙁

Mr Kuncak finished third in the Junior’s field, 5 seconds behind our club’s Mr Cermak, who surprised us all by coming second, just 0.5 seconds behind the winner. Lenka finished somewhere in the middle of her field, but her final time was good for a >100% score, which means she is still in the game!

Our club also won the Men’s single, the Boys 15/16 pair, and got a third place in the men’s lightweight single. Because of the points earned for all youth categories and the U23 rowers, this was a huge success in a race with very strong competion.

It was time to return to the small trailer. Three singles (including my single “Dolfijn” which was rowed by Lenka) were prepared. Romana arrived just in time with the car, and we drove to the start, where we unloaded the single, rigged them, and then drove back with the trailer (and some bags with shoes and dry clothes).

Then we took the car back to the start, and it was time for me to get ready for my own race.

Two years ago, I won, with a few seconds lead. Last year, I lost. Mr Polasek gave me 5 seconds. Unfortunately, I had found out during the morning, that Mr Polasek had cancelled. He had a cold last week and didn’t feel like it. At the start, I also found out that the two guys from Ostrava had cancelled. This kind of reduced the tension of the race. My club mate Eduard was the next fastest guy on paper, with me being the fastest. The other participants were three guys from the rowing club in Hradec Kralove, who looked like newbies in the Masters Rowing field, and Mr Bejbl from Brandys, who I estimated to be slower than me.

I found out it is good that I have pre-race routine with a lot of reserve time. Only when I put the single in the water, I found out that I had forgotten to move the footstretcher from Lenka’s position to mine. That is a problem, because one of the nuts is normal one, and you need a tool to unscrew it. Luckily, Romana was still on the bank collecting our slings, so I could get to the car and get the tool. I still had time enough to do a 2km warming up drill on the water.

Here is the full race video:

I made a terribly bad starting stroke, which made me smile and shake my head. Then I was off. After a few start strokes I dropped to my well-tested 27spm and didn’t dare to go higher. I think I made a wise decision. Looking at the power plot, corrected for the river’s current and the headwind, I more or less rowed a flat row in terms of power (Watt).

Pace helped by the river current, but in a slight headwind from 12 minutes onwards.

The guy starting 60 seconds before me was a 68 year old Masters rower. Just a year younger than my father! I passed him in the first kilometer, and then I had enough space to focus on my own rowing. I think I steered well. Perhaps the big turn at the beer brewery was a bit wider than could have been, but the river was really the fastest in the middle. Whenever I got closer to the banks, the pace numbers started to worsen.

After the big turn I was rowing into a light headwind, and I had to tell myself that it was a headwind, and not worry too much about the pace creeping up above 2:00 minutes per 500m.

In the final 1000m I started counting strokes, and in the final 500m I had company of our friend Ludek on the bike, which was very good because it helped me rate up to 28, 29 and then 30spm.

I did a 1km cooling down and when I was taking the single out of the water, I heard the speaker announce the results. I had won!

Second place was for my club mate Eduard.

It took us about 30 minutes to get the boats ready for transport, and then we walked over to the club house to receive our medals:

A (slightly obscenely looking) cup, a medal and sweets. What more can a Masters rower wish?

We arrived home around 8:30pm.

Sunday

Around 2pm we drove to the rowing club. We unloaded the trailer. I washed my single, and then we watched something very exciting.

Our club was founded in 1912, and in the old hangar at the river club house we have a few very old wooden boats. A few of our older club members have made it a project to restore these old boats. Their first piece was a 1944 clinker eight, one of the few left in this part of the world. Today, after more than 50 years, it was the first row for a 1934 clinker eight, a lighter and faster boat than the 1944 one (and made of better quality wood).

This was no easy restoration. A big part of the middle of the ship was rotten and had to be replaced completely.

It floats!

By the way, 1934 was also in the time when Czechoslovakia, in the middle of a worldwide economic crisis, warmly welcomed German refugees, antifascists and jews escaping Nazi Germani. A bit of a contrast with the political climate of today. 🙁

My workout of today was cycling home from the rowing club. It was rainy and cold, but it was a nice recovery workout:

The Czech town of Brno has two universities, the Technical University and the Masaryk University. In 1937, the two universities raced each other in eights for the first time.

World War II came in between.

The race was held again in 1946 and in 1947.

The communist took over power. Rowing was an “elite” sport and the universities race did not happen any more.

Last year, in 2015, our club ČVK Brno, organized the “zeroth” edition of the renewed university eights, which was won by the Technical University.

This year, we have enhanced the program. On Friday, the two local universities race each other. Tomorrow, on Saturday, we have three more eights. There will be 1:1 heats, repechages, semifinal and final.

The race is rowed on the river Svratka. Narrow, and twisty. The entire event is pretty small. Here is a video impression.

This weekend, our club, and thus my family and me, participated in a small regatta in Brandýs nad Labem, a small town on the river Elbe, close to Prague. Having left Brno around 2pm, we arrived in Brandýs at 5pm.

This is Ondřej Synek’s club. The bronze (Rio) and silver (Beijing, London) Olympic medal winner and four-times World Champion of course trains in the Prague club Dukla, where most of the Czech National Team train on the Vltava river or on the canal in Račice, but he is the president of the club where he started rowing and an inspiration to the local rowing community. Of course, this was one of the reasons why we had chosen to take part in this regatta, but also because there are many rowing clubs on the Elbe (Labe) river and it would be a good opportunity for the kids of our club to measure their forces with the kids from this region. In Moravia, our club is one of the best, but on the National level, the Prague and Elbe based clubs regularly beat us.

The joint towns of Brandýs nad Labem and Stará Boleslav. The island in the river Elbe (top left) is where the rowing club is located

When we arrived, we were surprised by the humble conditions. We were wondering if it was possible to organize a relatively big “small regatta” on this site.

The Synek himself was laying out the buoys.

A few pictures (not taken by me) of the rowing club’s buildings:

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We unloaded the trailer and sent the kids for a training. After that we drove to our “hotel” Sport Centrum Brandys, which was a time travel back to the Communist 1980s. The rooms were depressing, brown, and worn down, but at least it was clean.

In the evening, we walked back to the rowing club for a party. The beer was on Ondrej Synek and we had a great time.

My race was scheduled for Sunday, so on Saturday I took my youngest son to the Prague zoo, just a 20 minutes drive from the race venue. We spent 5 hours at the zoo, and it was great, except for the heat. It was 31 degree in the shade. In the afternoon, we returned to the regatta. I had a beer and watched the races. Our tent was under a group of oak and birch trees on the East end of the island, so we were in the shade, but still it felt like being in a laundry.

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Sunday started early, because the girls had their singles races at 9am. I managed to get a little 30 minutes practice row in, just to check if I would be able to race in this 2 year old bow-wing Wintech single. It was OK. Compared to my own single, this felt a bit more like rowing a tank, but I managed to get decent boat run.

Lenka’s race didn’t go well. She didn’t finish too far behind but did finish last, rowing a low stroke rate and looking tired. After the race, she told me she wanted to start rating up at the 500m mark, but got demotivated by seeing the 800 sign when she was expecting 500. A 800m sign? I checked it and found that just before the 500m mark there is a sign marking 800km to the river’s end in Hamburg!

Then there was a long wait for my race, which I spent watching the racing, or reading a book under one of the trees. It was hot, 29 degrees in the shade, but it wasn’t as humid as on Saturday. It was actually one of the nicest Sundays I have spent. On a river bank, under the trees, with a view on the houses and gardens on the other side of the river, early 20th century villas. Big houses from the 1910s and 1920s and smaller, but elegant villas from the 1930s. With gardens sloping down to the river banks, with large trees, nice terraces.

I should also compliment the regatta organizers. Even though there was a very full program with starts every 6 minutes, and just two motor boats, the organizers managed everything easily and calmly. There was enough dock space to launch and land without problem. There were no queues at the catering tent, there was nice commentary, and the music was fantastic. Usually they just broadcast a local radio station, but at this regatta they had a complete musical program, starting with some jazz in the morning, moving to rock during the day, but instead of the usual pop, the DJ played music from lesser known rock bands and really helped to maintain the easy sunny weekend atmosphere. Just perfect.

Then it was time for my race. The line-up was:

Malecky from Melnik (1977)

Doubek from Brno (1974)

Roosendaal from Brno (1972)

Lacko from Roudnice (1972)

Brezina from Litomerice (1969)

Before us, there were 10 heats of boys (14 years) doubles, starting at the 1000m just as we, so after warming up and a few practice starts, the Masters rowers could wait in the shadow under the highway viaduct.

Michal Doubek was telling me that I would win, but I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t know the other guys (and I didn’t check them), and with Masters rowers you can’t really tell from the looks. A huge guy who pulls 6:30 on the erg can be slower than me, a lightweight guy pulling 6:56.

The river was wide enough for five boats, but there were no buoys marking the lanes, just one line of buoys to separate the racing from the boats rowing towards the start. The course is almost straight, with a very slight turn around the 500m line.

The course. Fairly straight but still not easy to steer with 5 boats next to each other.

We were started off. My start wasn’t slow but I do faster starts in my own boat. It takes more strokes to get the Wintech going. Malecky was a length in front of me, and I was in second position. I prolonged the high rate start to try and come next to him, which I managed to do, but I paid a high price. About 20 strokes in I realized this pace was not sustainable, so I lowered the rate a bit and Malecky rowed away from me.

At the 500m mark I was just one length ahead of Brezina. As I started turning to row the final straight line to the finish, Brezina started to catch up with me, but he didn’t turn. The umpire was shouting at him, and at one point I also shouted “left”. Then he slowly started to turn, but he had already pushed me out of my lane. Rowing in a quite nice club boat, I didn’t want to risk, so I preferred taking the wider turn over risking a clash. In the final 250m we were rowing next to each other, but he managed to push his bow ball over the finish line before me. Of course I didn’t protest. This is a small regatta. A Masters single race. No reason to be overly serious. Also, I did receive apologies immediately after the race.

It was also interesting to see that the winner, Malecky, started in lane 1 and finished in lane 6.

Warming up and race

So a third place. My measured time was 3:44. The river was almost standing still after the dry summer, so I guess that a stream corrected pace would be somewhere between 1:52 and 1:55 average 500m pace. Not good. Not bad. Probably according to expectations after 2 heavy weeks of training with a focus on head racing, no tapering, and an energy draining Saturday spent in a hot zoological garden. There were also a few beers on Friday and Saturday evening.

I just checked the results of the Masters Nationals, and Malecky was 9 seconds faster than I, rowing in the B field. Brezina didn’t start in the single. It’s an interesting fact about Masters rowing. Even when you win, you know there are probably dozens of faster scullers out there, who just couldn’t participate because of other priorities. It’s as much about showing up as it is about rowing fast.

So our son Dominik was the only family member taking some medals back to Brno. He steered the 14 year old boys 4x+ to a win and he won the boys 12 year old 2x with his partner Stepan. Among his trophy was the picture below and a rowing cap signed by Synek:

The Synek handing out medals. How inspirational is that?

I love small regattas. A relaxed atmosphere. Lots of racing going on. This is were future Olympians learn to race and get addicted to rowing.